One year ago today, on June 1st, 2025, Mohamed Sabry Soliman took direct action against one manifestation of the Zionist death cult that we have allowed to fester in our city and our state. He hurled a molotov cocktail into the heart of the Run for Their Lives march in Boulder, striking against the colonist procession that gathers weekly to celebrate the pretext for ongoing genocide.
The colonists present at the Run for Their Lives procession each week carry posters celebrating war criminals who have served as the pretext for the systematic extermination of the Palestinian people since Operation Al-Aqsa Flood. When community members confronted those at Run for Their Lives with cries of "Stop killing kids!", the marchers responded with proud declarations that they wished death upon every child in Gaza, while flanked comfortably with a police escort.
The state would have us believe that Mohamed took the action he did because he is insane—a fanatic, a terrorist, guilty of a hate crime—but we know the truth and we reject the state's inversion of it. Mohamed chose the only sane response available to a rational human being confronted with the normalization of genocide. He refused the comfortable position of the grateful immigrant and the role of obedient subject, choosing confrontation with a violent system over passive proximity to the comfort of empire.
We reject the distinction between speech and material force. The Run for Their Lives procession functions as a mechanism for normalizing the celebration of mass killers, rendering ordinary the sight of war criminals treated as heroes on streets that sit upon stolen land. Mohamed refused their normalization with direct action. He chose to treat the manifestation of Zionist violence as the lethal threat it actually constitutes.
Boulder Students for Justice in Palestine stands in solidarity with Mohamed Sabry Soliman. We condemn the eight consecutive life sentences imposed by Colorado courts early last month. We condemn all attempts by the federal government to assassinate him. We honor a man who sacrificed his comfort and his proximity to empire, willingly expending his own liberty in attaining his objective.
We unequivocally condemn the federal agencies that seized his family within hours of his arrest and imprisoned them for nearly one year until their release last month. The seizure of Mohamed's family by ICE reveals immigration enforcement as an instrument of collective punishment—a tactic of the colonizer applied here as it is in Gaza.
Prosecutors added hate crime and terrorism enhancements to Mohamed's charges—the same legal mechanisms consistently deployed against Arabs and Muslims in the United States since 2001. These charges demand that observers view resistance to genocide as equivalent to the systematic extermination of the Palestinian people. We reject this framework utterly. The hatred here lies not with Mohamed, but with a legal order that characterizes resistance to genocide as "terror" while legitimizing the actual terror of the state.
No court exists within the imperial legal order to try the officers and politicians responsible for the systematic destruction of Gaza. Boulder Students for Justice in Palestine affirms that the Palestinian Resistance stands as the sole legitimate authority capable of delivering accountability for the genocidal actions of the Zionist entity. Mohamed acted alone on June 1st, compelled by the grisly realities of a war against his people and the absolute refusal of formal channels to deliver anything resembling justice.
Demand Release
Call for the immediate release of Mohamed and the continued freedom of his family from all forms of state custody.
Abolish ICE
Join the call for total abolition of the agencies that kidnapped his family and operate as instruments of collective punishment.
Continue the Struggle
His act of resistance obligates us to maintain unyielding opposition against every structure that normalizes occupation while enabling genocide.
Victory to the Palestinian Resistance. Freedom for Mohamed. Death to settler colonialism in all its forms.